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A comment on Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in the US and Canada.

Re:Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in t... by quartz on Monday November 27, 2023 @01:28PM (#38436107)
It would be cool to see an equivalent map for freight rail.

These threads always focus on the lack of passenger rail service in the US but ignore that the US also has one of the largest, safest, and most efficient freight rail systems in the world[1]. I'd love to see it live!

https://railroads.dot.gov/rail-network-development/freight-r...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in t... by wpm on Monday November 27, 2023 @03:07PM (#38437493)
Define efficient. Profitable? Maybe. Good at moving an array of goods from anywhere in the country to anywhere else? Not so good.

The Class I's and their obsession with operating ratio and PSR have strangled freight in this country for decades and pushed costs onto the public by means of increased truck traffic (and the congestion, pollution, and roadway damage that entails). Unless you're shipping bulk chemicals or coal, you're probably gonna use a truck.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in t... by toomuchtodo on Monday November 27, 2023 @01:36PM (#38436221)
http://tracker.geops.ch/

https://atcsmon.software.informer.com/

https://www.rail.watch/rwmon.html

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in t... by ryry on Monday November 27, 2023 @01:44PM (#38436356)
I did a bit of a deep dive on this over the weekend and left feeling more confused than when I started. From what I can gather, outside of CN's holiday freight train, most of the tracking is done by community members with SDR antennas and Raspberry Pis. They report to centralized servers (which I've yet to find), and the data indicates where trains are in signalling blocks. I'm the least knowledgeable person on trains, so I don't know if this is all accurate, but that's my best understanding.

I'd love to build some sort of service that takes this data, references a DB of signaling blocks, and establishes an estimated lat/lng - but that's a huge project of its own.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in t... by bonestamp2 on Monday November 27, 2023 @02:38PM (#38437107)
Ya, looks like it goes to a privately run server and the client that accesses the data requires membership. Seems like there should be something like Open ADSB (aircraft) but for trains. I might be interested in working on something like that too.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in t... by ZanyProgrammer on Monday November 27, 2023 @01:49PM (#38436442)
PSR would like a word with your categorization. Indeed the Class 1s are the mortal enemy of decent intercity and commuter rail.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Trains.fyi – a live map of passenger trains in t... by carbotaniuman on Monday November 27, 2023 @01:32PM (#38436169)
It's quite hard to see those sadly due to how freight operators handle traffic - you often have to use word-of-mouth and FB groups to track them. I know there's a lot of railfans that have this data, but I'm not sure it's in a format one can actually use.
[ Parent | on HN ]